


A Weirding Away

by opalmatrix



Category: Chronicles of the Kencyrath - P. C. Hodgell
Genre: Autumn, Gen, Mystic Ruins, occult experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-28 18:24:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21141179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/pseuds/opalmatrix
Summary: Shade reluctantly sets out for home after surviving the autumn cull at Tentir.  She never gets there.





	A Weirding Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheliak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheliak/gifts).

> Dear recipient, you wanted such interesting characters! I wonder whether Jame will ever find out that Shade is her cousin? I must acknowledge the [Kencyr Wiki](https://kencyr.fandom.com/wiki/Kencyr_Wiki), which was my constant companion (along with the original books) as I worked on this. Beta by [**Minutia_R**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R).

The sound of her classmates' raucous celebrations washed around Shade, a storm of merriment that slowed her as she pushed her way up to her quarters. The one small moment of shining calm was when she caught Gorbel's eye, momentarily, and he gave her a definite nod of approval, falconeer to falconeer.

It was too bad that the Knorth had gone already.

The Randir barracks was comparatively peaceful. Shade's cousins of various degrees were packing for the Autumn's Eve break, most with a brisk air of purpose. No one could think of Wilden as a cozy nest, the way the Brandan and Jaran seemed to regard their homes, but for those who had passed the latest cull here at Tentir, Wilden would be as welcoming as it ever was. Shade was one of their company, in theory, but she felt herself more in tune with those who had been expelled. Like them, she packed slowly, reluctantly. Addy seemed to read her mood and poured down Shade's arm onto the floor and then under the bed.

Ten-commander Reef, his pack slung from one shoulder, stopped and watched her for a moment. "Pick it up, already," he said. "No one wants to wait for you."

"Then don't."

"What's wrong with you? You passed."

"You know my grandmother isn't fond of failures," Shade said, her voiced muffled as she turned over the contents of her clothes chest.

"Oh. That." Reef looked away for a moment. "Well, if it comes to that, most of us failed."

_You're not her grandchild,_ thought Shade, but she didn't bother to answer him aloud. Her status among the Randir cadets was always an awkward sore spot. With no inclination toward leadership, she should have been just another cadet, her only distinctions her solid literacy, her skills at the Senetha, and her Shanir powers.

Except that she was their lord's daughter, and the Witch of Wilden's only grandchild.

"Be that way, then," said Reef. Belatedly, as he strode off, it occurred to Shade that he might have been charged with keeping track of her. _Not my affair,_ she thought, and slowly rolled up another shirt.

The barracks halls were almost clear when Shade finished stuffing the pack and coaxed Addy out from under the bed. She shouldered the satchel, carefully avoiding Addy's coils around her neck, and set out among the stragglers. The cooks were handing out small sacks of provisions to tide over those who had a substantial journey to their home keeps, but Shade ignored the offerings. She didn't feel hungry, and Wilden wasn't that far off. She had no horse of her own among those in the stables her at Tentir, and she was fairly sure that all the remounts had already been claimed by those with a real need for them.

She trailed most of the straggling cadets to cross the River Silver, and on the far side, she recklessly headed directly cross country toward Wilden instead of following the others to the road. Several cadets shouted after her, but no one came to try to turn her back to a more sensible route. She crested a small hill and went down into the next small valley, where a noisy stream poured over the rocks toward the Silver below, and found herself quite alone.

Shade stepped from stone to stone in the stream bed until she found one that made a decent seat, then shrugged off her pack and simply sat there for a while, thinking of nothing with all her might. Finally Addy, becoming chilled, crept into the neck of her mistress' tunic and coiled against Shade's belly. Shade curled her arms around the adder and blinked, really seeing her surrounding for the first time in hours. The day had become cloudy and cool, and the bright spot in the clouds that marked the sun showed well past noon. If she didn't hurry, Autumn's Eve proper would find her afoot in the woodlands along the river. And tendrils of glowing mist were creeping into the little valley.

_Weirding. That's all I need._ And then: _I could just walk into it, be done with this._

Five years ago, a little girl named Nightshade had done just that. Shade stood slowly, cradling Addy as the luminous vapor washed around her feet, and remembered.

"Nightshade! Little one! It's getting dark!"

Shade dropped to her belly and wriggled under some bushes on the hillside. She was pretty sure Aunt Jaspre couldn't see her anyway, but it made her feel safer. Not really _safer_—"safer" was what it was like to have a mother at home. But better.

One part of Shade said that her mother's sister was doing the best she could. It was not Jaspre's fault that she was a cook, where her sister Coral was a soldier. But that meant that Coral was now down at Urakarn, far away to the south. "My lord says that you're old enough to do without me," Coral had told Shade, and Shade had hated her father, Lord Randir, with all her small, cold heart.

"Nightshade!" The voice had a sob in it. "There's weirding coming!"

For moment, Shade's stomach was cold with fear, and then she pushed it away. Being afraid never helped. 

Neither did caring about things. She'd made friends with a cat, patched its wounded leg, named it Cinder. She could hear the cat inside her head, how glad she was when Shade came to see her.

Her grandmother found out about it. Lady Rawneth seemed pleased, to Shade's surprise. That was a wonder, but all that happened afterward was that Shade had to start going to class every day with a few of her Highborn cousins, learning to read and write. Also, Grandmother spent time every seventh day explaining what being a Shanir meant. Shade was worried that being a Shanir meant she would become a priest, but girls weren't priests, so Shade was not sure what Grandmother planned for her.

The teacher told Grandmother that Shade was slow to learn, except for the Senetha, and that she seemed to be listening to something outside the cold, boring classroom. And then her father found out about the cat and tossed Cinder to his direhounds.

Under the bushes, shivering in the darkening air, Shade whimpered, remembering Cinder's death. She didn't tell her mother: Coral was very busy with their lord's business at that time. And then Lord Randir sent a levy to Urakarn, and Coral went with it. Shade had decided that the only way to be was to keep her heart locked up as tight as possible.

"Nightshade!" shrieked Aunt Jaspre. And then there was silence.

Shade crawled out from under the bushes. She wasn't worried about her aunt: no one got rid of a good cook for something as small as having a wayward niece. Especially when that niece was her lord's daughter. In fact, given what had happened to Coral and Cinder, it was probably better for Jaspre that everyone knew Nightshade didn't care about her aunt.

The sky above Shade's head was a beautiful blue, the sound of the waterfall behind Wilden was a gentle whisper, and the heady scent of pine trees filled her nose. The glowing mist rolled down the valley, and the child opened her arms and walked into it.

Suddenly, there were no hills, no pine trees, no whispering waterfall. The sky above her was a flat dark grey, with no sun nor stars nor moon to be seen. The land around her was flat too, and the air was even colder that it had been a moment before. There was no mist and no fortress, only a small light off to her left. So she walked that way.

Sometimes she saw small copses of shrubbery and scrubby trees. It seemed that she had been walking for hours, with the light hardly getting closer at all, when the ground under her feet became softer. It looked like a tilled field or a large garden, weed choked and almost overgrown in spots, but Shade was very hungry. In the bleak half-light she recognized some carrot greens and went to pull them. A carrot came out of the ground reluctantly, then doubled up and grabbed her wrist with its rootlets. Shade gasped and tried to drop it, but it clung tenaciously. She dropped to her knees and thrashed her arm and the carrot against the ground. Finally it let go and fell off, and Shade watched, horrified, as it crawled back into its hole.

Now she was cold, hungry, and very frightened. She staggered to her feet and started running toward the little light. Presently, she could see a building; no, more than a building—a wall and more buildings behind it. It was a fortress. She stopped and stared.

Some of the boring lessons back at Wilden had been about maps, the Riverland, and the fortresses. But there was no river, no hills and valleys, and this didn't look like any of those fortresses. In fact, this place looked as overgrown and neglected as the field with the horrible carrot. She could see the light again, though, shining through the empty gateway. Shade walked toward it, rubbing the sore spot on her wrist where the carrot had clawed her.

Inside the gateway, only a short walk across the broken, uneven paving stones, was the main hall. This place was much, much smaller than Wilden. Now she could see that the light had the warm color of flames. And the light was bright enough that she could see bones scattered across the pavement. Horses. People. A skull rolled over and leered at her with empty eye sockets and a bony grin.

Someone came to the doorway, blocking the light, peering at her as she stood, frozen in fear. "Oh," said a man's voice. "Look at that. I suppose you had best come in."

She swallowed her terror and came: it was either that or stay out in the courtyard with the bones of the dead.

The fire was in the hall's main fireplace. The big room was almost unfurnished, and Shade could see that instead of logs, the fire was being fed with broken chairs and benches. One table still stood by the fire, with half a dozen chairs around it. "We have a guest," said the man who had greeted her to the one who sat at the table.

"So I see," said the other, in a curiously blurred voice. "I told you that we should have done something about the door." The firelight washed across a face hardly more clothed in flesh than the sad skulls lying on the pavement outside.

Shade whipped her head around to look at the first man, but in fact, he looked like nothing so much as a Highborn: more handsome and less sharp-faced than a Randir, with sad silver-grey eyes. He smiled at her. "Don't be startled by my brother," he said. "He cannot really help what he is."

That had a familiar sound: one of Wilden's other Kendar, looking at Shade askance, and Coral saying, "Don't judge my daughter. She really can't help it, that she's gods-touched." Shade's heart, which she had tried so hard to lock up, gave a little thump. She felt sorry for the skull-faced man. He smiled at her as well, or tried to.

"Perhaps you could come closer, where I can see you better?" he asked.

Grey-Eyes nodded encouragingly. Shade stepped closer to the other man, reluctant even though he was (maybe) a little like herself. Still, it meant going closer to the fire, which was warm and smelled reassuringly of burning wood.

Skull-Face looked her over very thoroughly indeed. It reminded Shade of Grandmother when she found out about Cinder, although Skull-Face didn't seem to be weighing Shade the way Grandmother had. Then he looked at his brother. "Keral's get," he said.

Shade blinked. "No, my lord. My father is Lord Randir."

Grey-Eyes raised his eyebrows. "Come here to me, child." He held out his hand, and she came over to take it, wondering. He looked at her palm and then into her eyes. "Indeed," he said at last. "What do they call you?"

"They call me Nightshade. But I call me Shade."

She wasn't sure why she told him that, but he nodded most courteously, as though she were a Highborn lady, "And may we call you that as well, young mistress?"

"Yes, certainly," she said. Her wrist was starting to itch, where the carrot had grabbed her. They seemed awfully nice, for people living out here in the middle of nowhere. "Who are you? And your brother? Why are you out here?"

Grey-Eyes sighed. "It's better if you don't know, Mistress Shade. You may just keep thinking of us as Grey-Eyes and Skull-Face. I won't ask why you are here, either."

She was startled by that. They must be Shanir too, she guessed, to know what she was thinking. "I can tell you why I'm here. I don't mind. I stepped into some weirding."

"Of her own will," murmured Skull-Face. Shanir for sure, she thought.

"Perhaps you are hungry," suggested Grey-Eyes, exchanging another glance with his brother.

She was, but thinking of this place and the bones outside, she had concerns. "I p-pulled a carrot, but it grabbed me back and then crawled away."

They both laughed at that, but then Skull-Face said, "Show me where it seized you."

Shade held out her arm. To her dismay, the skin was reddened, swollen, and showed many little red pinpricks. He seemed to frown and then held two fingers over the swelling. The fingers drooped and wrapped around her wrist, as though they had no bones, and she blinked, startled and revolted. But then the itching went away, and he was pulling back his hand so she couldn't see his fingers anymore. And her wrist was all better. 

"Thank you," she said. None of this made any sense. It was like a scary tale told by an old lady by the fire on Autumn's Eve.

There was a light thump on the table behind her, and when she turned to look, Grey-Eyes had set down a basket, with a handle. It was a strangely ordinary thing to see here. From it he drew a loaf, a small wheel of cheese, some pears, and a flask. Skull-Face got up and disappeared through a doorway behind him.

"He's fetching plates, I suppose," said Grey-Eyes. "How old are you?"

"I'm eleven," said Shade.

"Do they give you lessons?" 

"Yes," she said. "Reading, writing, figures, maps, and the Senetha,"

"Ah," he said, looking pleased. His grey eyes were less sad for a moment. "Let's have a look. Show me the first water-flowing kantir."

No one had looked so warmly interested in Shade since Coral left. She went into the center of the room and bowed to him, as though he were Vulk, the Senethari at Wilden. Grey-Eyes had her do the first Kantir of each of the disciplines in turn, and it became a lesson. He was much nicer than Vulk, and when they had finished the wind-blowing kantir, she felt warm and strong and happier than she had been for ages. "I think water-flowing suits you best," he said. "Now, let us eat."

Skull-Face had set out some pottery plates, slightly damp, and matching cups. Grey-Eyes pulled out his belt knife to carve off wedges of bread and cheese. They had a quietly pleasant meal. Shade's hosts ate sparingly, and soon she was comfortably full. Skull-Face looked at Shade and then at his brother. "It grows late," he said. "Time the little mistress should be going."

Shade's heart sank, although she knew (when she let herself think about it) that she could not stay here, in this strange, empty place, forever. "She is very young," answered Grey-Eyes.

"Even so," said Skull-Face. He started to speak in High Kens, which Shade had only just begun learning. It sounded like verses, and the words wrapped around Shade like a thick blanket. Someone was drawing her up onto her feet and walking her away from the table, and she passed the doorway of the hallway and stumbled a little on the broken flagstones in the courtyard.

"Farewell, and forget," said Grey-Eyes, pushing her through the empty gateway into the dark land, and she was falling, falling, ….

Shade fell to her knees, striking cold earth, Addy squirming against her belly. She opened her eyes and found the gates of Tentir looming a hundred yards up the slope. When she looked behind her, all the bottom of the Silver's valley was flooded with weirding, and the Commandant and a small party of other randon were looking at it askance. 

"We were just in time," said one of them, a Brandan.

Sheth Sharp-Tongue nodded once, accepting the remark. As he turned to start up the slope, he stopped, staring. "Why, it's Cadet Shade of the Randir, isn't it?"

"Y-yes, R-ran," said Shade, lurching to her feet. She was chilled to the bone and could barely think. Memories of childhood washed through her mind, drifting away like smoke in a strong breeze when she tried to focus on them. She had stepped into the weirding when she was eleven, walked through a dead land, and met someone whom she wished she could remember. But how had she ended up here, now?

"Where have you been?" barked another randon. "Your house sent us notice that you never arrived on Autumn's Eve. The new term starts tomorrow!"

Shade gaped at him, bewildered. Somehow she'd lost ten days. "Weirding," she whispered.

The randon gaped in turn, and the whole party broke into murmurs of dismay. Only Sheth remained silent, but then he kicked his horse forward and reached down one elegant hand. "Up. Cloud can easily carry two for this short distance. "

Shade grasped his wrist, and he easily pulled her up in front of him. He was warm and solid, and yet his real presence only reminded her of someone else, someone who had also taught her.

But all she could remember was a pair of silver-grey eyes, for all the world like those of the Knorth Jame.


End file.
